Shyll rolled with it, dragged the duster with him, slammed him into the wall. He heaved, threw the addict back over Shkai'ra and Sova. The duster rolled, started to get up. Inu grabbed him and shook him in half.

Shkai'ra crawled to her knees. Shyll looked up at her, saw the eagle features gone chalk-white, blue around the lips. Her left arm was dangling, moving with the sway of her shield; the other was held cradled against her chest, already swelling like a tight glove overstuffed with water. She grunted with every movement, deep in her chest, pulling in breath by main strength.

"Why?" he wheezed.

"Had to. Sova down choking, blue, didn't know howlong. Shit, shitshitshit-"

He moved to her side, his knees making ripples through scumming liquid that drained through the warped flooring; paused to check the Thane girl, found her breathing hoarsely but steadily. Shkai'ra shuddered once and went very still as he removed her shield.

"Broken couple places, shit no don't take the armor off, the plates spring back into place 'less they're cracked, splint it well enough for now. Strap it across me... shit, ah, shit I'm not going to be worth shit for six months, Megan needs me now, some sheepfucking general I turned out to be, I underestimated them, only dusters' I've seen were dying in gutters-"

"We all did," he mumbled around a thong as he fastened her right arm securely; imagining the pain from fractures grating unsecured, he shuddered. A long gouge went from his nose to the corner of his right eye.

"Turds of the Dog, they won't stop when they're juiced up."

"Finished," he said. He bent, swore again as he took Sova's slight form over one shoulder. "Cracked two ribs, c'n I lean on you?" They made speed toward the staircase, and Shkai'ra's fever-bright eyes noticed the greathound. He looked a different breed, save for the size; the armored forequarters were dark and slick from muzzle to haunch, and one ear was gone.

"Dog?" she rasped.

"Fell through fuckin' rotten floor, just his legs, ones below sliced his foot before we could break the rest out.

Last ones went out the windows and down into the cellar to the tunnel, we heard the Ri get them, other's 're running for the River Quarter."

They reached the ground floor, and the teRyadn laid Sova out in a line of wounded; nearly half the forty whohad entered the dosshouse were there, and ten of those were unmoving.

"Thanks," Shkai'ra muttered as they turned toward the cellar.

"Thank you," Shyll replied, clutching at his side; the other hand held a light hook-axe.

"What for?" Somebody had brought a kraumak, and hung it on a thong around the Kommanza's neck.

Another Ri-scream echoed up the narrow stairwell, and a moan of obscene pleasure.

"Know Megan's got a good one, now," he said.

"Besides, like Sova 's if she were m'own." They were both panting, leaning against each other as their breathing came back under control. Behind them, the survivors, the hale and the walking wounded, gathered.

It was important to strike before the impact of their losses sank in, before wounds stiffened.

"She could die because I waited," Shkai'ra said, her boot on the first step. Shyll was beside and behind her, gripping her belt; it would do little good if she went into the cellar face-first. Something was dripping on her head, something warm from above.

"Still better to have someone who'd save the child,"

Shyll said.

me, Shkai'ra thought to the animal below, redcoat, i come.

The shrilling below continued. A blast of: welcomeeateateatfun, came to her, with: gratitude warmgood ooohtastefunny.

They stepped into the arched cellar, and saw the Ri.

He was standing over the last of the dusters, holding him down with one paw and extending his neck towardthe man's face. Gripping it with delicate lips, almost a caress; the duster gurgled as the fangs set. Without transition the Ri was rearing, shaking the man like a rag, shaking, screaming, the duster screaming with either agony or pleasure beyond human knowledge, and then the face came away with a sound like the tearing of heavy canvas. The man was back on his hands and knees, the front of his skull red and pink and pink-white of bone, the eyes still staring, naked jaws clamping as he shook his head back, forth, back. The Ri tossed its muzzle to swallow, came to him again on dancing feet, bent daintily for the next bite: fun! he sent, fun! oooooo, tastefunnyooooo. The man was near dead now, and Hotblood moving in a circle.

funnygoodtastetaste Staggering, lying down with a contented sigh and a purr like a huge cats, tucking the long muzzle by its side and protectively over the twitching, faceless body.

sleepsleepdrowseeyesclosedwa rmsummerbeescubsoooooooh. The green eyes closed, and Shkai'ra descended to kick it in the side. One eye opened on her again, blinked, closed.

"Now we know what secondhand dreamdust does to Ri," Shyll muttered. He had never been so close to one, not since his choosing-day when his had tried to kill him. So glad it did, he thought.

The others were boiling down the stairs behind them, ready to race heedless into the tunnel whose door clanked rhythmically in the draught, a black mouth.

"No, no!" Shkai'ra shouted. "Shields first, polearms next. Get a dart in your casters, third rank. Now. Move .".

Where in Halya are the Dark-Lord-taken reinforcements? Habiku thought, slamming away fromthe fight on the second floor, up past the slaughter on the third, hasn't reached the stairs here, yet.

They came through the basement tunnel with no resistance, emerged in an empty wine cellar, up into the atrium garden. Rilla leaned over the ballustrade on the second floor, shouted down: "Here! It's still going on higher!" And disappeared.

Shyll shuddered at the thought of all those stairs. No, climbing tip's a Halya of a lot easier than going down.

Rilla, Megan, wait for me.

They climbed, seemingly forever, one step at a time, hearing bootnails grind on stone steps, hearing the fighting get closer. Third floor.

The windows were broken in, shutters swinging, snow and bitter cold blowing in. Shyll and Shkai'ra, leaning on each other, gasping, Inu whimpering, fangs bared. Rilla on both knees, hands clutched around her middle -The Kommanza looked up. Rilla and Shyll's eyes met Shkai'ra's and the linkage set by the magic on the ice snapped free and- -Megan's back shielding the young Rilla while Marie staggered about mouthing threats against her daughter, and the wood whistling down- -Megan dancing in the circle, seen by Shyll, the movements together warm as love, music taking them beyond themselves as they made beauty as transient as a snowflake and he must hide desire for true friendship's sake- -Megan kneeling beside the fire on a beach under palms, nightwind fluttering the black hair that was her only garment, reaching out to Shkai'ra with small hands whose nails glinted as bright as her eyes--Megan seen frowning over a lantern-lit desk, pen clenched between her teeth as she puzzled over the ancient text- -Megan turning with a sweeping gesture to present the Lady Grey Wolf to Rilla, her face calm with confidence- Then the images and their auras of emotion blurred: Megan's face, again and again, laughing, frowning, set with anger, soft with passion, yelling with battle-rage.

Love, need, fear, resentment, friendship, a final image- -Shyll weeping, with his face pressed to Rilla's breast, her arms rocking him, anger and despair- "Gods of the Dog," Shyll whispered. "What happened?" They were joined, all of them felt Rilla's exhaustion, Shkai'ra and Shyll's pain, Megan's rage-just winded, from her- Megan, a twofang slash across her face and left hand, leaned on a twofang in a body, too tired to pull it out.

She shook her head. "No... time..." she gasped. "Think about it later..." She had fifteen or sixteen left out of thirty, perhaps some in the garden were only wounded... Rilla, seven. Shyll and Shkai'ra, twenty-one.

"He's in the Tower," she wheezed, then straightened.

My hate is warm. Ride it. Cherish it.

"Gods of the Dog, more stairs," Shyll muttered.

Megan turned, yanked at the twofang, almost falling as it came free, used it to lean on, heedless of the damage the bottom blade did to the floor.

She paused at the door into the Tower and her office, saw the faint blue line around it. A red witch would never have noticed it. She pointed the fang at the door and jammed the steel head into the center of it, yellow flaring through her headache. The warding snappedwith a crackle and a drift of woodsmoke as it burned the door.

It swung open. Silence. She mounted the steps, hearing her own breathing. Habiku, you son-of-two-brothers, I'm home. I'm here and I'm going to drag you to the Nest and put you in a steel Cage for the rest of your Goddess forsaken life.

The door at the top was open. She prodded it with the fang, expecting a hiss of dart. Something. Nothing.

Everyone was behind her. She gathered herself, burst through the door, rolling, lunged to her feet, stopped.

"Rather dramatic way to make an entrance, wouldn't you say?" Habiku sat at the east window, Lixa held across his lap, a knife at her throat. She lay very still, held in his arms, his legs. "You know, this one is a distant relative of yours?" he asked conversationally, pushed enough with the edge to raise a line of blood.

"You're overly fond of your own kin, Meganmi. I propose a little contest. You and I. Just you and I. Right here."

"Habiku, you always could talk your way out of almost everything." She leaned on the twofang, shifting her weight wearily, looking down.

I've got her, he thought gleefully. The knife in his hand turned into a yellow viper, twisting to bite his hand. With a yell, he threw it away.

As it left his hand, a knife flickered from Megan's, turned once in midair, struck with a solid "thock" hilt first in the middle of his forehead. She followed its flight across the room. He relaxed a second, stunned; Lixa squirmed out of his hands. He wobbled, shook his head and Megan kicked him carefully in the temple.

"Almost everything," she said, panting, looking down at his unconscious body. "Almost.""And then?" Ranion said, leaning forward eagerly on the edge of his cushions. The private mezem was an alien growth deep in the Dragon'sNest, a round circle of sand, surrounded by ditches, with two bridges, and gates for the fighters. The Imperator's box, on the north side, and the seats all around. A glass arch above, with F'talezonian snow and cold beyond it; below, air heated to the Arkan warmth, and a circle of courtiers about the lord of the city. Courtiers, court wizards, generals, dragged from their beds late this morning of the second day of Dagde Wot; Avritha cool and distant in black nightrobes, her jeweled nails and gold finger chains resting on Ranion's arm.

Megan completed her account, conscious of the flat exhaustion in her delivery, a bone-deep distaste at the sight of this master of all her people hanging on her words. She glanced around at the white marble, the gilding and indigo-dyed silk. Her survivors stood behind her, and behind them, the Cage, gleaming in the lavish illumination of the great yellow kraumaks set around the skylight above.

The DragonLord was a little disappointed with the brief terseness of their stories, but there was enough else to keep him edgy with delight. The scattering of pictures about that the court artists had made on the scene of the action; he was particularly taken with a sketch of the Moryavska, Moshulu, dead on his knees with the twofangs clutched to his breast, the ever-helpful Uen held it for him, to catch the best angle of the light.

For the first time in more than twenty iron cycles Ranion had left the Nest himself, on a elaborately guarded and guided tour; the battle with the dusters had been enough to leave him silent and trembling with sheer excitement. Luckily, he had accepted their tale of the Ri Hotblood dying of tainted flesh...

He pointed at Shkai'ra. "And is this the barbarianfrom over the Lannic?" he said. Nobody in F'talezon had seen a human from across the fabled outer ocean in living memory. She stepped forward, bowed low despite the pain of her arms, spoke a long sentence in a liquid, flowing tongue. "What was that?" The Woyvode asked. "Dread Lord," she said, in her gutturally accented Zak, "so do they address the God-King in the greatest realm of far Almerkun, my home."

Megan felt her mood swing crazily from black despair to a wild exhilaration. She recognized the language; it was the first she and Shkai'ra had had in common, though native to neither one. Fehinnan, the street-argot of Illizbuah. "Why don't you try eating the peanuts out of my shit, sonny?"

Warmth flowed to her, under the pain. Shyll and Rilla were at her back, the teRyadn's weight supported across the Zak's shoulders, and half his face concealed by a bandage. The coldness, the hate she'd cultivated jarred like a knife against bone I...They were there, and she relaxed control to let their presence grow.

"You have the most interesting servants, ClawPrince," Ranion said. "And now... my promise!

Habiku Cagedweller, all for you." He leaned forward, hands on knees. "Once you've put him in the Cage there, I'll have it delivered to your House as soon as it's repaired. Then, you wouldn't mind me visiting, sometimes, would you. No, no, don't protest at the honor. Even your DragonLord deserves some relaxation, some amusement." He winked. "I'm sure we'll find many ways for him to amuse us together. "

Megan set her teeth, turned. Like you? she thought.

Somewhere a herald cried in Arkan: she caught the words for "victory" and "chain". Habiku was led in between two guards, their hands on his arms. His eyes sought hers, and he smiled broadly.

"Meganmi," he said. "Did they tell you my mother killed herself? There's just the two of us, now. As Ialways wanted it."

Ranion laughed behind her, and the court followed.

She could hear them, hear Avrithas clear chuckle among them. A guard prodded the door of the Cage open, and another pressed a silver hammer into her hand, for the blows that would seal it forever. She walked forward, toward him, a rustling at her back as the others followed. Close enough to have to crane up to meet his honey-brown eyes, lock of hair on his forehead, smiling down at her as he had before, this time with a purpled bruise on his face. She caught the faint scent of violets he had always used.

"Together forever," he said. "As I always wanted. As you always wanted." The face twisted, slowly, the expression seeming to crack and shift like an egg about to hatch, hatch something... "But you can't keep me alive forever! And when I'm gone, your life will be as empty without me as mine was without you!"

She stopped, the hammer weighing in her hand.

Habiku. Dark Twin. Hate/love/love/hate I've been as taken with you, as you with me. In her mind she remembered her own hoarse shriek and the smash of furniture under hands. Boryis's voice, "Please don't let it twist you too far." She thought of an empty cage swinging in the atrium of her house, herself standing below it. I'd be weeping, raising my claws and cursing you for being dead.

My life would be empty. In that vision I'm alone but for the Cage. But I'm not alone, here, the warmth of the other three around her like cradling arms. I've beaten you. In my office, I beat you. If I put you in that Cage I'll be like you until the day I die.

She drew a deep breath, reached up to stroke the lock of hair out of his eyes, as she'd always been to afraid to do. He jerked in shock. "Habiku. Had you or I been any different, we could have been friends. Even lovers. But I wont lock myself in that cage with you. Iforgive you."

Megan turned away, handing the hammer to Lixa, who tood behind her. "Woyvode, you have graciously given me my sweet revenge. I will not answer for anyone else, but it finishes here, for me." She bowed very low, and felt Shkai'ra and Shyll and Rilla in her mind, understanding why.

Habiku unfroze, wrenching at the guards, screaming, "No! No! It had to be you! You, Megan! You! No!" He twisted one arm loose, whirled one guard into the other. Then he was free, staggering toward her back.

Ranion was on his feet, mouth open. She turned, and saw a guard's twofang catch him in the back, once, twice. Habiku coughed, fell to his knees, drooling blood, stretched a hand toward her. "You . . " he whispered and collapsed.

Epilogue/Epithalamion THE PLATEAU.

WINDWITNESS PLACE OF VOWS.

FOURTH IRON CYCLE,.

FIRST DAY YEAR OF THE PEWTER RI.

Spring, 4974 A.D.

"Oh, sheepshit," Shkai'ra said. "Is this a stain?

Megan? Rilla? Shyll?"

The tent was large and square, empty save for their dressing tables and racks; the gaily colored canvas boomed and rattled in the eternal winds of the high flat area above F'talezon. Vows taken in this mountain-ringed place were more sacred, carried to the Goddess on Her winds.

The others came to Shkai'ra, and Megan rose on tiptoe to solemnly examine the breast of her tunic. They were dressed alike, in the formal, knee-length, belted robes, trousers and low shoes, their hair garlandedwith the first tiny flowers of the northern spring.

Shkai'ra's hung unbraided, silk-smooth and red-gold, halfway to her waist. It emphasized the sudden chalk-pale color of her skin as she sat abruptly on the stool.

"What is it?" Rilla asked with sharp concern. "Is it the arms?"

The casts had only been off for a month. The Kommanza shook her head, flexed her arms; the left was almost as good as new, and even the sword-hand would recover its strength, with exercise.

"I'm... I'm fucking terrified," she said, and turned her head to bury it against Megan's chest. The steel-nailed hand stroked her hair as the tall woman's harsh features flushed red in turn.

"Why, what is it, love?" Megan said softly. Her own skin flowed, making the fresh-healed twofang scar seem like an adornment. "All the way through those interminable lawspeaker papers you were as attentive as a judge, even when it was giving you headaches."

Converting the House of the Sleeping Dragon from its rare status as a sole proprietorship to a more conventional clan corporation had not been quick or easy.

The reply was muffled. "That was simple. Don't want our descendants knifing each other over portions three generations from now. But..." She hesitated. "I've never been married before!"

"Neither have I," Shyll said, resting a hand on her shoulder and drawing Rilla close. "Not even once, much less to three... I'm nervous too, but damned if I'm going to show it. I had my fits before I let Rilla talk me into it."

A head popped in the doorway: Sova, in her best also.

"The priestess says she's ready," she said. "She meansit's getting kind of cold in that thin robe and she's sixty, and she wants to get down the hill to the feast. Inu's going to start barking soon, Fishook is chewing on his ruff."

The Kommanza took a deep breath and rose. They linked hands and walked through the tent flap into the early sunlight, through the avenue of their guests, cheers and laughter. Sova walked importantly before them, and the young grass and thrown flowers were soft beneath their feet. The city was a multicolored wrinkle in the blanket of the world behind them, silver thread of the river edging it. The priestess waited in blue robes, by a table set with a loaf, salt-bowl, knife, cup.

"Gods, I could use a drink," Shkai'ra muttered without moving her lips. Megan and Rilla squeezed her hands reprovingly as a silence fell; she could hear Shyll's choke turning to a light clearing of the throat.

They halted, knelt on the spread cloth, the outer pair turning inward so that they formed a U. The priestess stood at the open end, raised her hands and faced the four corners of the world. Lined-faced, white-haired, she smiled at the two Zak, even kneeling the others were nearly as tall as she.

"Winds witness! Winds witness! Winds witness!"

A murmur of response from the onlookers.